Near Miss of the Day 284: Punishment pass while riding with a 14-year-old

Today’s near miss is a punishment pass of two cyclists in Guernsey. Alex, the cyclist who shot the footage, deliberately stayed outside a friend’s 14-year-old daughter nearer the kerb after noticing how close the car behind was when they pulled away from the lights.

“I was riding home from coaching the children at the local cycling club with a friend’s 14-year-old daughter a couple of weeks ago. We’d just moved away from a set of traffic lights when I became aware of a car pulling up extremely close behind us and the driver repeatedly revving the engine.

“Having passed through the next junction we were subjected to the inevitable punishment pass which, as you can tell from my reaction, despite half expecting it, still caught me off guard with the actual closeness.”

Alex made a formal complaint to Guernsey Police, who interviewed the two cyclists and the driver.

“I was informed by the police shortly afterwards that the file had been submitted for consideration for prosecution to the Law Officers (the local equivalent of the CPS).

“Having had a previous complaint about a close pass thrown out by the Law Officers (when I was left with a broken finger and ended up being told that ‘someone will have to die before anything changes’ ), I looked at the Decision to Prosecute Code of Guidance on their website.”

The Code of Guidance lists examples of common public interest factors tending to favour prosecution:

• The evidence suggests the offence was premeditated;
• The offence was committed in the presence of a child;
• There are grounds for believing the offence is likely to be continued or repeated;
• The offence, whilst in itself not serious, is prevalent;
• A prosecution would have significant positive impact on maintaining public confidence.

“Naturally, two weeks later I was informed that, ‘it wasn’t in the public interest’ to prosecute the driver,” said Alex.

“I guess safeguarding the lives of cyclists isn't either.”

> Near Miss of the Day turns 100 - Why do we do the feature and what have we learnt from it?

Over the years road.cc has reported on literally hundreds of close passes and near misses involving badly driven vehicles from every corner of the country – so many, in fact, that we’ve decided to turn the phenomenon into a regular feature on the site. One day hopefully we will run out of close passes and near misses to report on, but until that happy day arrives, Near Miss of the Day will keep rolling on.

If you’ve caught on camera a close encounter of the uncomfortable kind with another road user that you’d like to share with the wider cycling community please send it to us at info [at] road.cc or send us a message via the road.cc Facebook page (link is external).

If the video is on YouTube, please send us a link, if not we can add any footage you supply to our YouTube channel as an unlisted video (so it won't show up on searches).

Please also let us know whether you contacted the police and if so what their reaction was, as well as the reaction of the vehicle operator if it was a bus, lorry or van with company markings etc.

> What to do if you capture a near miss or close pass (or worse) on camera while cycling

> What to do next if you’ve been involved in a road traffic collision